Recent Highlights

January 2014: Fieldwork in Iqaluit, Nunavut, for a new collaborative research project with the University of Alaska Fairbanks, "Water, Energy, and Food Security in the North: Synergies, tradeoffs, and building community capacity for sustainable futures (Sustainable Futures North)"

May 2013: Worked with Inuit Elder and frequent research collaborator Ilkoo Angutikjuak to film a feature story for the upcoming IMAX 3D film "Wonders of the Arctic"

May 2013: Collaborated with visiting scientists and Inuit experts to complete fieldwork for the Silalirijiit project

February 2012: Traveled to Nepal with a group of Inuit from Clyde River, Nunavut, Canada. In a high-latitude, high-altitude exchange project, the team visited and shared knowledge with Tsumbas, the Indigenous residents of the Tsum Valley, a remote Himalayan region experiencing rapid environmental change, much like parts of the Arctic.

May 2011: Was awarded the 2011 Dr. Grant Ingram Distinguished Lectureship at the University of British Columbia. She shared the lectureship with Inuit experts and frequent research collaborators Esa Qillaq and Raygee Palituq.

August 2010: Contributed to Ice is nice!: All about the North and South Poles, part of the Dr. Seuss books "Cat in the Hat's Learning Library" series.

June 2010: Science profiled Gearheard's climate research and collaborations with Inuit hunters in an article called Trusting the Public.

December 2009: Gave an invited presentation "Using Traditional Knowledge in Climate Change Decision Making" at an official side event of the Inuit Circumpolar Council at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (COP15).

August 2008: Gearheard and Lene Kielsen Holm (of the Inuit Circumpolar Council-Greenland) were invited to give the keynote address at the 6th International Congress of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association, in Nuuk, Greenland.

April 2008: "Silavut: Inuit Voices in a Changing World" opened, featuring Shari Gearheard's research in Inuit communities. The exhibit ran from April 15, 2008, through May 1, 2009, at the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder. Silavut is now available as a traveling exhibit. For more information, see the University of Colorado Museum Web site.

February 2008: Natural History magazine, featured an article about Shari Gearheard's work in Nunavut, "A Change in the Weather" (PDF, 1.2 MB)

March 2007: Kalaallit Nunaat Radioa TV filmed Gearheard and collaborators in Greenland for "Inuit Isaannit Silaannaq," a documentary about the Siku-Inuit-Hila Project (Greenlandic).

February 2006: Finished appointment to the National Academy of Sciences Study Committee on "Designing an Arctic Observing Network"

December 2005: Completed postdoctoral appointment at Harvard University with a fellowship from the NOAA Postdoctoral Program in Climate and Global Change

Current Research

Ongoing collaborative work with Inuit hunters and Elders to document Inuit knowledge of climate and environmental change and facilitate local efforts and leadership in research, response, action, and education

Investigating connections between high-latitude communities in the Arctic and high-altitude communities in Nepal that have in common livelihoods closely tied to snow and ice environments that are changing

Working with Inuit women to understand women's roles in local subsistence systems and sharing networks, as well as women's knowledge of the environment, and how these have been affected by environmental and social change

Ongoing research on knowledge-coproduction; linking Inuit knowledge and science

2002

Fox, S. 2002. "These are things that are really happening”: Inuit perspectives on the evidence and impacts of climate change in Nunavut. In The Earth is Faster Now: Indigenous Observations of Arctic Environmental Change, eds. I. Krupnik and D. Jolly, 12-53. Fairbanks, Alaska: Arctic Research Consortium of the United States.